The top-51 rule is simple: from the start of the new NFL league year in early March until the first week of the regular NFL season in September, only the 51 most expensive contracts actually count against a team’s salary cap. This is because the salary cap is designed to accommodate a 53-man regular season roster—not a 90-man offseason roster. Teams need the additional players for training camp and competition purposes, but if all 90 were counted against the salary cap, almost every team would be significantly underwater. For example, the Falcons would currently be at -$8.9M in cap space if all 90 contracts were being counted.
The top-51 contracts are calculated by their salary cap hit, not the total value of the deal or any other measure. These top-51 contracts are also liable to change at any time, and often will change throughout the course of the offseason due to the addition and subtraction of players. However, when adding (or removing) a player from the roster, determining the cap hit becomes a little more complicated than a simple +/- calculation. I’ll use a theoretical example below to demonstrate how this works.
Say the Falcons are feeling aggressive after their recent infusion of cap space, and decide to sign free agent EDGE Everson Griffen to a 1-year deal for $8M. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll say the deal has a cap hit of $8M, with no other machinations.
You might assume that the deal would simply cost $8M in available cap space, right? Instead, the deal actually costs $8M minus the difference of the 51st most expensive contract—which was already counting against the cap. This is because Griffen’s more expensive deal would actually be “pushing down” another contract below the top-51 line, thus freeing up the cap space from that deal. Here’s how it would look mathematically:
Cap space cost of example deal: $8M
Cap space cost of 51st most expensive contract: $750K (Ahmad Thomas)
Actual cap space cost of example deal: $8M-$750K = $7.25M
So, in actuality, an $8M deal for Everson Griffen would only cost the Falcons $7.25M because of the top-51 rule.
Now it’s important to remember that, come the first week of the regular season in September, the team must be able to fit the total cost of the 53-man roster onto the salary cap. Since this would be adding two additional contracts to the roster, it could result in additional salary cap charges. For instance, if the Falcons kept the top 53 most expensive contracts for the regular season, it would cost the team an additional $1.41M to cover the two new contracts (in this example, Jordan Miller at $733K and Olamide Zaccheaus at $676K).
However, depending on who makes the team, Atlanta could reduce this number significantly or even gain cap space by cutting expensive veterans. As the Falcons generally always carry an extra $3-5M into the season for emergency signings, this small amount of cap space is nothing to really worry about.
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